


Monster

by indefensibleselfindulgence



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, F/F, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Platonic Love, Slice of Life, Speculation, Spoilers For 69, Time Skips, Yasha's Memories
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-29
Updated: 2019-06-29
Packaged: 2020-05-28 10:29:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,993
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19392262
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/indefensibleselfindulgence/pseuds/indefensibleselfindulgence
Summary: Her memories come rushing back.





	Monster

**Author's Note:**

> we got yasha backstory but at what cost

Everything hurts.  
  
She's not surprised so much as disappointed in herself. The sun beats down on her so hard, and the light is practically blinding, so she closes her eyes. Easy enough, one of them is already swelled shut, dry blood crusting along her cheek.  
  
She doesn't know how long she lays there, waiting for the pain to either pass or finally overtake her. She's angry, she's sad, there are tears slowly pooling, and in the heat, she's surprised they're not just streaming off of her face.  
  
And then the sun is blotted out.  
  
“Oban.” He says, after he takes care of her, cleans her up and fixes her wounds and sits her down in front of a fire. His skin is red, and his eyes are yellow, and his wings are flesh where hers are bone. He sits close to her, but for once, she doesn't feel threatened or horrified or irritated by the infiltration of space.  
  
Or maybe she's just too tired too.  
  
“Orphanmaker.” She says, tries to say, all that comes out is a hoarse whisper followed by a cough, and he pulls off his own water skin and places it to her lips. “Do fiends need water?”  
  
Maybe she should have repeated her name again instead.  
  
“I travel around a lot. Meet so very many strangers in need of rescuing. If you like, you can hold on to that. I have another one, though it is filled with wine at the moment and something tells me we will both not be in need of it for quite some time.”  
  
Yasha drinks more water.  
  
He could kill her, he could do it so easily because she sees his blade at his side inches from a clawed hand. She had her weapons taken from her, she had nothing to defend herself with. But he doesn't. Instead, he pats her shoulder and tells her he'll be back.   
  
There's not a lot to stare at around the small camp, so she sits against the mountain wall and soaks in the warmth of the fire, and the temperature drops lower and lower.  
  
Oban comes back with meat, still dripping and offers to cook it for her but she all but tears it out of his hands. When more than half of it is gone, she swallows and wipes her mouth with the back of her hand before offering it to Oban.  
  
“Oh, I'm more than alright. After all, I caught it for you, Orphanmaker. I would feel guilty if I were to take it away from you.”  
  
So he had caught her name after all.  
  
“Alright.” She mumbles, and eats the rest slowly.  
  
Well, slower. 

  
.x.

  
“And you go into town like this?” She asks, leaning against the trunk of an overturned tree.  
  
“Of course not.” He laughs. His eyes twinkle and then with a curl of his hand, a thin drow stands in front of her, long hair tucked between long ears, no horns, no wings. “Dapper, no? Those who live here are so accepting if you show them a little coin they don't even bother looking closer.”  
  
He places one elegant, dainty finger under his left eye and lowers the skin there, waiting. She humors him and walks over to get a closer look, and sure enough, yellow blinks back at her. His same soft eyes.  
  
“Huh.” She says.  
  
“I'll buy you a new sword, yes? What kind do you prefer- bigger ones, I suppose. Yes, certainly, bigger ones for someone like you. I'll see if I can find something lovely and special for you.”  
  
She'd ask, but if he's stupid enough to buy a weapon for her, there's really no need to waste the breath.  
  
The Wastes make everyone a little unhinged.  
  
Oban leaves, demure and playful, and comes back with a greatsword broader than his- his current chest. There's good heft to it, and she can grasp the pommel with both hands and Swing, and the blade sings through the air and the vision of it carving through the flesh of those who took Zuala from her come so easily.  
  
She can practically smell the iron, taste it on her tongue, when Oban coughs, and she finally notices the other man with him. An orc, almost as tall as she is. He has a measuring tape.  
  
Oban rattles off instructions, and the Orc nods along, breathing heavily while he measures her for her new armor.  
  
They don't sleep in the town.  
  
They sit around a fire Oban makes for them, drow gone and replaced by that warm red again.  
  
He tells her about the Angel of Irons and about the Calamity and about the King That Crawls, and she finds it shockingly easy to fall asleep to his voice. 

  
.x.

  
“You're very nice.” She says, on the back of a moorbounder Oban borrowed from a raiding party they cut through. “For a Fiend.”  
  
“And you're very quiet for a Celestial.”  
  
She shrugs, and Oban laughs. She doesn't bother asking how he knows she's Aasimar. What else could she be, looking the way she does in the Wastes. His back is warm, and as the moorbounder leaps and lands and they rock against each other, she closes her eyes, rests her head on his shoulder and loops her hands around his waist.  
  
“Where are we going?”  
  
“To meet more friends, allays, those who know the true calling and want nothing more then to help us free what has been locked away.”  
  
His wings twitch under her weight. Big leathery things that she's gotten used to sleeping under with the weather gets particularly awful.  
  
They meet with another fiend, this one blue and with a tail that can't stop swishing as they chitter back and forth in abyssal. She only picks up on a word or two. She thinks they talk about battle strategy. Or some kind of strategy.  
  
The blue one keeps nervously glancing at her, at her sword where it's seethed over her back. Yasha makes a face, and it actually takes a step back, tail long and nervous, almost ramrod straight.  
  
Oban switches to common at some point, and she almost doesn't notice.  
  
“Orphanmaker.” He says, and she takes a step forward, lifting her hand up to grasp the hilt.  
  
It's been long since she's had a real fight.  
  
“Oban-” And then the rest is hissed in Abyssal, sharp and nervous and scared and good, so good, so exactly what makes her blood boil. She unsheathes her sword, and the thing actually takes a step back. She sees so many familiar faces on its body that she can hardly be blamed for lunging.  
  
Oban doesn't stop her until there's nothing but mush at her feet. Doesn't stop her even then.  
  
“Isn't that better?” He asks, hovering in the air with his beautiful wings so that the filth doesn't get on his boots.  
  
“Yeah.” She whispers. It is.  
  
It's finally easier to breathe. 

  
.x.

  
They have a proper camp now, with tents.  
  
And others, a small raiding party all her own. Two more fiends, a dragonborn, and a bugbear, all so eager. They listen to Oban preach about their Lady of Irons while she sits beside him and polishes her blade. When she bothers to look up, she sees they believe him, they want her free just as bad as Oban does. They want the Calamity again.  
  
They want what's been taken to be returned.  
  
She's firmly of the same opinion.  
  
She has her own tent. It's lonely. She supposes she should be grateful, when Oban slips into her tent and lays beside her.  
  
For a moment she thinks he's going to proposition her, but- no. They just lay side by side, staring at each other. On a whim, she tells him about Zuala.  
  
He tells her the Angel could give her back.  
  
Somehow, she believes him. 

  
.x.

  
There are years of traveling together.  
  
Her and Oban and their party. Ruthless and bloodthirsty and always searching for answers.  
  
They fall into bed together once, after a raid that results in a map so fragile she's scared to even look at it for more than a few seconds at a time. She's almost blind drunk, and even Oban tilts after every step. They're both so giddy with the looming promise of finally, finally, finally, that it seems almost second nature.  
  
It's not great.  
  
Or good, even.  
  
It's barely fine.  
  
Yasha's only slept with women in the past, and Oban's never slept with anyone at all, and it's only the alcohol that brings them together, but afterward, when her back hurts a little, and her head is already starting to pound, they lay in her tent together, bodies flushed against each other, and he whispers gospels in abyssal into her ear, that's fine. And good. And very exceptionally great.  
  
She likes to imagine that Zuala would have liked him, just as much as she does. Not enough to take him to bed, gods, no one should ever take him to bed, but when he talks, it's music and flowers and the skies parting to a brighter future.  
  
She likes to imagine their home together, the three of them, close and careful, with a garden of so many different flowers. Stalks so tall Yasha couldn't even see above them.  
  
She likes to imagine Zuala with them now, in her uncomfortable tent, hunting for their Lady of Irons together, hunting for retribution together.  
  
She could protect them both.  
  
So much better then she had before. 

  
.x.

  
There's a giant between them and the tunnels.  
  
Under any other circumstance, Oban would have insisted on a different route, around or deceit or something else, but they can feel how close they are.  
  
She thinks she hears singing at nights, and when she asks Oban, he nods too.  
  
The first time Oban sees her wings, there's half dead giant between them and answers. And it's raining. Because it almost always rains when she cries.  
  
Everything hurts, the exhaustion is heavy, and the tears come unbidden. She screams through them, deep from her chest, in Abyssal like the others do, and when her sword becomes too heavy, too tiring to heft, her wings rip out of her back, and the giant actually staggers back.  
  
Afterwards, before they retract into their nest of blood and muscle, Oban runs his fingers over them.  
  
“Stronger than mine, Orphanmaker, but of course they are, they're attached to you.”  
  
“They don't work.” She bites out as she wipes the smeared ash off of her cheeks where it ran down her face.  
  
“Oh, they do.” He says and presses a tiny kiss into her shoulder. “Just because you don't fly doesn't mean they don't work. They make my blood run cold, and my skin stand on edge , and they bring you closer to the Angel. So many wondrous gifts.”  
  
“It would be cooler if I could fly.”  
  
Oban laughs, and it's so warm that she almost doesn't feel her wings scrape against her spine when they retreat inside of her. 

  
.x.

  
She remembers it so vividly, so quickly and so brutally that it almost knocks her off of her feet.  
  
She's a monster- a monster for leaving him and a monster for betraying her friends on top of that- she drives her blade through Nott- Nott of all people- and grits her teeth harder.  
  
More and more memories, more and more of her friends look at her horrified, more and more footsteps that run further and further away from her.  
  
Oban's body is mush at her feet, nothing left of him, just like there's nothing left of her friends.  
  
She remembers Jester's scream just as much as she remembers Oban's laughter now.  
  
She helps the Hand beat down gate after gate after gate, body moving through the motions, and so many faces keep freezing themselves in front of her, frowning, crying.  
  
She's lost people she still can't remember.  
  
She wasn't even there when-  
  
Monster.

**Author's Note:**

> comments are always encouraged and very very very appreciated
> 
> find me on[ tumblr ](http://iamalivenow.tumblr.com/) and [ twitter](https://twitter.com/licotain)


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